Prime Factorization Trees

Tonight will be a quick post because I am so so tired from a very busy weekend and wonderful Easter day with the fam.  I hope you all got to spend some quality time with family and enjoy a home cooked meal!  My cheesy potatoes were a success, thank the lord!  My cooking skills leave a little to be desired, but I AM working on it! :)

Now, onto MATH!  I find that the students I work with can always use continuous work with multiples and factors to help them with upper elementary math skills.  These prime factorization "trees" are a perfect way to do some review.

The "trees" are simply green construction paper cut out into big triangles (I used the Ellison die-cut for this).  Then the students choose a number to put at the top of their tree and write it in the corner of the triangle.  Their job is to think of two factors that can divide evenly into that number.  This process continues with adding on "trees" until all the factors are listed.  I then "take them to the river" on this and have them write out the equation with exponents to show the equal representation of factors. 

My example:  I started with 48, broke that down to 6 x 8, then broke 6 down to 2 x 3 and 8 down to 4 x 2. Then I added one more "tree" since 4 had to be broken down again, to 2 x 2.

Hopefully these "trees" can add just the right visual for your students to help them understand factors and prime factorization.
Have a great week yall!